Constructing culinary personae online

Abstract

Celebrity chefs can be seen almost every day on TV shows in the UK, and they also communicate with the public via cookery writing in print and on websites and social media. This study investigates the websites of 10 British celebrity chefs from both a communicative and a linguistic perspective, focusing in particular on the ‘About’ sections, in which they present themselves to the public, and their introductions to each recipe. Eleven chefs have been selected: six male (including one duo) and five female, and covering a range of ages and different degrees of seniority. The aim is to show how the chefs construct their culinary personae and if they keep this consistent across their self-presentation and in the presentation of their culinary know-how. The findings show that in general the chefs tend to reinforce gender-based characterizations, although younger female chefs show a characterization more usually assigned to male chefs.